Dee Margo, Mayor of El Paso, TX, on Border Wall Politics

MARGO: I was trying to personally meet with the president beforehand to visit with him, because I’ve said for months that, if you want to understand the border and how we work with Mexico, you need to come to the largest city on the Mexican border that’s been intertwined with Mexico for almost 400 years. We understand it better. We’re one region that exceeds 2.5 million people. And we’re the — we’re the place you ought to be coming to talk about it.

AMANPOUR: And yet, did you actually manage to say that to him? Did you meet him?

MARGO: I got a handshake, but that was the extent of it. We thought we would get a little bit more time than that, but that was the — that was truly the extent of it.

AMANPOUR: Did you feel like he was trying not to meet you, that he knows you disagree, that he knows that you have different facts at your disposal than he talks about. I mean, did you feel it was deliberate, that he didn’t want to make time for you, because of what you say? Actually, let’s just play what — what he’s actually said about you.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: And there’s no place better to talk about border security, whether they like it or not, because I’ve been hearing a lot of things — “Oh, the wall didn’t make that much of a difference.” You know where it made a big difference? Right here in El Paso. But I don’t care whether a mayor is a Republican or a Democrat, they’re full of crap when they say it hasn’t made a big difference.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

AMANPOUR: How do you feel hearing that, and what would your answer be to that?

MARGO: I’d love to hear that over and over. The bottom line is, I’ve never been against a physical barrier on the — on the border. I think that’s part and parcel to an entire process, from a strategy standpoint, for control of the borders, and we are a sovereign nation. I’ve never disagreed with — with the president on any of that. All I’ve tried to do is clarify his comments related to the fact that we were not a lawless community with high crime rates before the fence went up, under the Bush — Bush presidency, in 2008. Certainly, it is a contributing factor towards — to our safety here, but it is — it was not the sole panacea prior to. And that’s all I’ve tried to — to say. I’ve not spoken against physical barriers of any type. I think that’s part of that whole process. There is — you mentioned earlier, there really is about 78 miles of fence in the El Paso sector for the Border Patrol. It’s not continuous. The fencing that went up under the Bush administration in 2008 was primarily a replacement of about ten miles of chain-link that had holes in it and was porous. So, really, I don’t — to my knowledge, it wasn’t expanding the fencing. It was merely improving it.